Elected Secretary and Member of
the Board of the National Association of Professional Swedish Visual Artists -
K.R.O - Konstnärernas Riks Organisation Stockholm - with over 6.000
members.

1979 - 1986.

Elected as the first Director and Chairperson
of the Board, while Curator/ Administrator of the former Swedish National Artist
Organisation, VIDEO-NU, Stockholm, an Art Laboratory for new electronic
technology financially assisted by the Swedish Government and the Stockholm City
Council ( 200 individual and 15 corporate members)

An innumerable number of
articles in Europe, Australia, China and USA have been published as well as
radio and television programs (e.g. catalogue text for
installations/exhibitions) by writers as: Pierre Restany, Paris, Öivind
Fahlström, N.Y., Kristian Romare, Belgium, Prof. Björn Hallström, Stockholm,
Pontus Hulten, Bonn, etc. etc .

In the short history of video
animation the Swedish artists TURE SJOLANDER and BROR WIKSTROM are the
pioneers. Their television art programme ' TIME ' (1965 - 1966) seems to be the
first distortion of video-scan-line rasters achieved by applying tones from wave
form generators.

For almost ten years they have
been using electronic image-making equipment for a non-traditional statement. It
must be kept in mind, however that SJOLANDER and WIKSTROM have a traditional and
solid artistic background. Howard Klein likens the relationship between
the video artist and his hardware to that between Ingres and the graphite
pencil. It should be added that real artists like SJOLANDER and WIKSTROM
have a natural relationship to any image-making equipment. In that respect they
differ from most cameramen and tape makers and they may come back some day as
pioneers in other fields of art.

In fact they have already
surpassed the limits of video and TV using the electronic hardware to produce
pictures which can be applied as prints, wall paintings and
tapestries.

They have generously provided
new possibilities to other artists, they are not working alone on a monument of
their own.

It is significant that the Royal
Swedish Academy of Fine Arts has decided to support SJOLANDER and WIKSTROM
financially.

We live at a time when borders
between the art forms are constantly being redrawn or abolished. Poets arrange
their poems as pictorial compositions or record spoken sequences of sound which
can hardly be distinguished from musique concrète. Composers are able to
build a complete composition around the manipulation of a spoken voice. Artists
sometimes create pictures by striking off newspaper photographs or mixing
conglomerates of discarded objects and painted areas into something which is
neither picture nor sculpture. Puppet theatre is performed by setting mobiles in
motion in the constantly changing light effects on a stage.

The border between photography
and painting is no longer clear, either, and it is easy to understand why this
is so. Tinguély, the creator of mobiles, started out by making a form of reliefs
with moving parts, powered by a machine placed at the back of them. After a
while Tinguély began to wonder why he could not equally well show the play of
cog wheels and driving belts at the rear and let "machine" and "shapes" become a
united whole.

Similarly, some photographers
have asked themselves why the action of light on photo paper and the development
baths could not become a creative process comparable with the exposure of a
motif  why camera work and darkroom work could not become
one.

Among those photographers we
find Ture Sjölander. Among those photo graphic artists, as he calls them,
who feel dissatisfied with the dialectic of the traditional photographers
relationship to his motif: when he searches for his motif, he is the sovereign
master of it, choosing and rejecting it . At the very moment that he touches
the trigger, he has become enslaved to the motif, without any possibility (other
than in terms of light gradation) to do what a painter does  reshape, exclude,
and emphasize in the motif.

This subjection to the motif
does not have to be disrupted by eliminating the motif. The photographer simply
needs to remove the limits to what is permitted and what is not allowed. To let
the copy of a photo remain in the water bath for an hour is allowed (if you want
to keep the motif). But leaving it there for a couple of days is the right thing
as well (if you want to let the motif diffuse into deformations soft and silky
as fur). Scratching with a needle or a razor blade is making accidents with
scratches into a virtue  and so on.

In addition, there is the chance
of manipulating a figurative or non-figurative motif by copying different
pictorial elements into it, by enlargements which elevate previously
imperceptible structures to the visible level, even up to monumental dimensions.
The tension between scratching lines of light into a developed (black) negative
the size of a matchbox and enlarging it on the Agfa papers the size of a bed
sheet. This is where the photographer has at his command tricks of his art which
the painter lacks, or at any rate seldom uses.

But on the other hand, is the
photographer able freely to experiment with the colour? Yes, he is  if he
brushes paint on to the negative and makes a colour copy.

He may also, like Ture
Sjölander, brush, pour, draw etc. on a photo paper  possibly with a
background copied on to it  with water, developing or fixing sodium
thiosulphite solutions, ferrocyanide of potassium and other liquids. In that
case the result is a single, once-only, art work. In this way he is able to
achieve a tempered and melting colour scale of white, sepia, ochre, thunder
cloud grey, verdigris, silver and possibly also certain blue and red
tones.

In this area, however, it seems
everything still remains to be done  but one single photographers resources
are not enough for the experiments to be conducted widely and in depth. Sweden
has recently inaugurated its first studio of electronic music. When will
photographers and painters be given the opportunity to explore this
no-mans-land between their time-honoured frontlines?

But can photography, in
principle, be equal to painting? Is not the glossy, non-handmade character of
the photo an obstacle? People have argued in a similar way about enamel work,
but that technique is now recognised as totally and completely of a kind with
the painted picture. If we adjust the focus of the "conventional painting
concept" when we are looking at photo painting, we will perchance discover that
in its singular immaterial quality it can possess new and suggestive
value.

Öyvind
Fahlström

Stockholm, 1961.

Translation from Swedish by
Birgitta Sharpe

TIME

"VIDEOART" ELECTRONIC
PAINTINGS - TELEVISED 1966 - 1967 - 1969.

"The role of Photography"
Commissioned by the National Swedish Television year 1964. B/w.
Multimedia/electronic experiment. 30 minutes. And an outdoor exhibition on
giant bill board in the City of Stockhom plus indoors exhibitions at Lunds
Konsthall and Gavle Museeum among other Gallerys. Represented as an
installation 80 dia/slides projected on canvas purchased by Pontus Hulten
at Moderna Museet Stockholm 1966.

"TIME" - b/w,
Commissioned by the National Swedish Television. Electronic paintings
televised in September 1966. 30 minutes. A video synthesizer was temporarily
built, in spite of the TV-technicians apprehension. (Same technical
system was later used to create MONUMENT one year later, 1967.) See
lettersfrom RUTT ELECTROPHYSICS, NY, USA dated March 12, 1974,
below *. "In principle this process is similar to methods used by Nam June
Paik and others, some years later." Rutt&Etra . Nam June Paik
visited Elektronmusic Studion in Stockholm July/August 1966 , during
the Stockhom Festival; "Visions of the Present". Static pictures from TIME was
demonstrated for Paik at this point in time. A rich documentation is available
from the main news media in Sweden about "TIME". Parts of "TIME" was planned
to be send via satellite to New York, but the American participants, E.A.T. -
Billy Kluver and &, pulled out. (See E.A.T.s and Billy Kluver's biased USA
history page from Aug. 1966) "TIME" is the very first 'videoart'-work
televised as an ultimate exhibition/installation statement, televised at that
point in 'time' for the reason to produce an historical record as well as an
evidence of 'original' visual free art, made with the electronic medium -
manipulation of the electronic signal - and 'exhibited/installed' through
the televison, televised. Other important factors for the creation of TIME was
our awareness of the fact that the "electron" was, at this Time, the smallest
known particle and that all traditional visual art, up to this Time was
created with light - material/colour reflecting the light - (lightpainting)
and the description of our new concept should be "Electronic painting".
Pontus Hulten and his associates launched the term "Machine" art as an attempt
to describe the Time movement. Pierre Restany was using the term "Mec Art",
later. The work was commenced early 1966. (Soundtrack by Don Cherry, USA)
Paintings on canvass and paper was made from the static material, and in
silk-screen prints, for a large numbers of Fine Arts Galleries and Museums
1966, ironically in a 'limited edition', signed and numbered by the artist;
Ture Sjolander/Bror Wikstrom. (See National Museeum Stockholm, Sweden).

"MONUMENT" - b/w.
Electronic paintings televised in 5 European Nations; France, Italy,
Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, 1968. Monument reached an total
audience of more than 150miljon. The work surpassed the limits of
"videoart" - a word first used in the beginning of 1970 - 73 - and was
developed into an extended communication project, involving other visual
artists, by invitations, multimedia artwork including the creation of
tapestries, (Kerstin Olsson) silk/screen prints on canvass and paper - first
edition, by Ture Sjolander/Lars Weck, posters, and an LP/Record Music,
(Hansson&Karlsson) and some years later paintings on canvass, (Sven-Inge),
and a book among other things, exhibited in several international Fine Arts
Galleries. Catalogue text for Ture Sjolander by Pierre Restany, Paris Oct.31, 1968.

"SPACE IN THE BRAIN" - 30
minutes. Televised 1969, in direct connection with the moonlanding project by
NASA. in Swedish Television. Soundtrack by Hansson&Karlsson. First colour
electronic original painting where the electronic signal where manipulated.
Described in media as an Electronic Space Opera. Based on authentic material
directly delivered from NASA. Space in the Brain was a creation dealing with
the ; "space out there" - the space in our brains and the electronic space,
(in television) Contemporary to Clarke's 2001, except that the Picture it self
was scrutinized and the subject, and focused, in Space in the Brain. The
Static material from the electronic paintings was worked out into other medias
and materials; tapestrys made in France among other objects was made in large
size, 3 x 2 meter, for Albany Corporation USA and for IBM, Sweden, as in
"TIME" and "MONUMENT", see above.

And a serie of international bestseller
posters was produced, and world wide distributed, by Scan-Décor Upsala,
Sweden.

To: International Section of
Swedish National Television, Stockholm, Sweden.

Extracts;

"I am writing a detailed magazine article
about the history of video animation.

From literature avaiable I gather that a
videofilm program, "MONUMENT", broadcast in Stockholm in January, 1968,
was the first distortion of video scan-line rasters achieved by applying tones
from wave form generators.

This is of such great importance -
historically - that I would like to obtain more detailed documentation of the
program and of the electronic circuitry employed to manipulate the video
images.

I understand from your New York office that
there may have been a brochure or booklet published about the program.

I will be happy to pay any expense for
publications, photcopies or other documents about the program and its production
-particulary with regard to the method of modulating the deflection voltage
in the flying-spot telecine used.

"Video synthesis" is becoming a prominent
technique in TV production here in the United States, and I think it will be
interesting to give credit to your broadcasting system and personal for
achieving this historic innovation."

Sherman Price

( A number of authentic documents/letters
from this communications is avaliable)

No "detailed article" or even magazine was
never reported or later presented after receiving the vital information from the
Swedish Broadcating Company, by Rutt Electrophysics)

Letter from the Manager of

THE PINK
FLOYD.

Stockholm, Septembre
11th 1967.

Dear Messrs Sjolander &
Weck,

Having seen your interesting Stockholm exhibition of portraits of the
King of Sweden made with advanced electronic techniques I have been struck by
the connection between this new type of image creating and the music-and-light
art presented by The Pink Floyd.

I think that your work could and
should be linked with the music of The Pink Floyd in a television production,
and I would like to suggest that we start arranging the practical details for
such a production immedialtely. With all his experiences from filming in the USA
and elsewhere I also feel that Mr. Lars Swanberg is the ideal man tp help us
made the film.

Please get in touch as soon as
possible.

Yours
sincerely

Andrew King

Monument

following text was written by

the Swedish Art writer

KRISTIAN ROMARE

1968.

MONUMENT

electronic painting 1968 by TURE
SJOLANDER/LARS WECK

We create pictures. We form conceptions of
all the objects of our experience. When talking to each other our conversation
emerges in the form of descriptions. In that way we understand one
another.

Instantaneous communication in
all directions. Our world in television! The world in image and the image in the
world: at the same moment, in the consciousness and in the eyes of
millions.

The true multi-images is not
substance but process-interplay between people.

"Photography freed us from old
concepts", said the artist Matisse. For the first time it showed us the
object freed from emotion.

Likewise satellites showed us
for the first time the image of the earth from the outside. Art abandoned
representation for the transformational and constructional process of depiction,
and Marcel Duchamp shifted our attention to the image-observer
relation.

That, too, was perhaps like
viewing a planet from the outside. Meta-art: observing art from the outside.
That awareness has been driven further. The function of an artist is more and
more becoming like that of a creative revisor, investigator and transformer of
communication and our awareness of them.

Multi-art was an attempt to
widen the circulation of artist's individual pictures. But a radical multi-art
should not, of course, stop the mass production of works of art: it should
proceed towards an artistic development of the mass-image.

MONUMENT is such a step. What
has compelled TURE SJOLANDER and LARS WECK is not so much a technical
curiosity as a need to develop a widened, pictorially communicative
awareness.

They can advance the effort
further in other directions. But here they have manipulated the electronic
transformations of the telecine and the identifications triggered in us by
well-known faces, our monuments. They are focal points. Every translation
influences our perception. In our vision the optical image is rectified by
inversion. The electronic translation represented by the television image
contains numerous deformations, which the technicians with their instruments and
the viewers by adjusting their sets usually collaborate in rendering
unnoticeable.

MONUMENT makes these visible,
uses them as instruments, renders the television image itself visible in a new
way. And suddenly there is an image-generator, which - fully exploited - would
be able to fill galleries and supply entire pattern factories with fantastic
visual abstractions and ornaments.

Utterly beyond human
imagination.

SJOLANDER and WECK have made
silkscreen pictures from film frames. These stills are visual. But with
television, screen images move and effect us as mimics, gestures, convultions.
With remarkable pleasure we sense pulse and breathing in the electronic
movement. The images become irradiated reliefs and contours, ever changing as
they are traced by the electronic finger of the telecine.

With their production, MONUMENT,
SJOLANDER and WECK have demonstrated what has also been main-tained by
Marshall McLuhan: that the medium of television is tactile and
sculptural.

The Foundation for MONUMENT was
the fact that television, as no other medium, draws the viewers into an intimate
co-creativity. A maximum of identification - the Swedish King, The
Beatles, Chaplin, Picasso, Hitler etc, - and a maximum of
deformation.

A language that engages our
total instinct for abstraction and recognition.

On an island aptly named Magnetic
Island off the coast of Australia, a Swedish artist lives in exile. Just like so
many others in today's media-landscape, he was first praised and then brought to
dust. However, he has left a lasting imprint on the world. As early as the
1960's, he made the first electronic animation. Had he been an inventor, he
would have been celebrated as a genius today, but because he is a predecessor in
the world of art, things are different. In that world, the great ones often have
to die before they are recognized. We all know how Disney's famous cartoons were
made: thousands of drawings, filmed in sequence. Even today some films are made
this way. However, electronic animation has opened up a new world within the
film industry and it has also made computer games and countless graphic
solutions possible in business and science. Pixar, which used to be part of
Lucasfilm and then sold to Steve Jobs in the lat 1980's, made the first
completely computer animated film called "Andre and Wally B" in 1983. The first
feature length fully animated movie was Toy Story from 1995. It was made by
Pixar and distributed by Disney. Disney had already started to use computer
animation in Little Mermaid from 1989, and then on through Aladdin, Lion
King, Pocahontas, etc In those fantastic movies the pictures were however first
drawn on paper and then scanned into computers for painting and cleanup and
superimposition over painted backgrounds. Decades earlier, in 1965,
Ture
Sjolanders electronically manipulated images were broadcasted by the
Swedish Television (SVT). Among other things,
Ture Sjolander was experimenting with the question of how much the portrait of a
person could be changed before it was unrecognizable, something which has
pioneered the amazing morph-technique that is used today. Gene Youngblood, who,
alongside with Marshall McLuchan, is the most celebrated media-philosopher of
today, devoted a whole chapter in his book Expanded Cinema, 1970, (Pre
face by Buckminster-Fuller) to the experiments of the SVT. Expanded cinema
means transgression of conventions as well as mind-expanding transgressions and
new definitions. Sjolanders broadcasts were not technically sophisticated, but
they were ground-breaking. The film mentioned by Youngblood is "Monument" (1968) by Ture Sjolander and Lars Weck. The
other earlier televised pioneering animation were "TIME" (1965/66) by Ture
Sjolander and Bror Wikstrom, and later "Space in the Brain" (1969) by Ture
Sjolander, Bror Wikstrom, Sven Hoglund and Lasse Svanberg. Whereas most of the
modern-day artists fade into oblivion, Ture Sjolander has found his place in the
art history by the making of those films. Ture, a lad from the northern city of
Sundsvall, had instant success with his opening exhibition at the Sundsvalls
Museum 1961. He moved to Stockholm in the beginning of the 1960's. At an
exhibition in 1964 at Karlsson Gallery his
imagery upset the public so much that the gallery immediately became the
trendiest place for young artists in Stockholm. In 1968, he created another
scandal, when the film "Monument" was televised in most European countries. For
a couple of years, Ture Sjolander was celebrated in France, Italy, Switzerland,
Great Britain and the USA. In Sweden there was a lot of jealousy. The Museum of Modern Art and the
National Gallery of Sweden, to name a few, bought his works, but the techniques
he worked with were expensive and after a few years, he found himself without
resources. Instead he started to work with celebrities such as Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo. They taught him
that exile  mental and physical - is the only way to escape destruction for a
creative genius. He moved to Australia. Ture Sjolander's works include photos,
films, books, articles, textiles, tv-programs, video-installations, happenings,
sculptures and paintings  all scattered around the Globe. Tracing will be a
challenging and exciting task for a future detective/biographer and
web-archaeologist's.But mostly, his work consists of a life of questioning and
creation. This is what sets him aside as one of the great artists of the
20th century. Another forerunner in the art world, the
internationally celebrated Swedish composer Ralph Lundsten, says in an interview
in the magazine SEX, 5, 2004: "In those days (the 19th century), a
painting could create a revolution. Today people look idly at all the thousands
of exhibitions that there are. Hmm. Oh, really. How clever he is, and they
yawn If I were a visual artist, and if my ambition was to create something new,
I would devote myself to the possibilities of the computer."In 1974, Sherman Price of Rutt
Electrophysics, wrote to the Swedish Television Company (SVT): "Video
Synthesis is becoming a prominent technique in TV production here in the United
States, and I think it will be interesting to give credit to your broadcasting
system and personnel for achieving this historic invention." He was referring to
Ture Sjolander's revolutionary work in the 1960's. No one at the SVT could at
that time imagine the importance that this innovation would have for television,
and hereby lost a lead position in the computer-development business. Amongst
the younger generation of computer animators, few know that they have a Swedish
predecessor. Many engineers were probably working away in their cellars in those
days, trying to do the same thing, but Sjolander was the first person to show
his results on the air. If any of you would like to have a look at the Godfather of animation,
you can find a glimpse of him by googling. He did not seek to patent his
inventions and he has made no money from it. However, he has made it to the
history books as one of the great precursors of art - and perhaps also of
technology - of the 20th century. For the past decades, Ture
Sjolander has mostly lived in Australia, but he has also worked in
other countries, such as Papua New Guinea and China. After a couple of
decades of silence, Sjolander's groundbreaking work was shown at Fylkingen, the
avant guard media and music hide out in Stockholm in the spring of 2004. In the
autumn of 2004, some of his recent acrylic paintings on canvas were exhibited at
the Gallery Svenshog
outside of Lund, Sweden. This was to commemorate the forty years that have
gone by since his last (scandalous) exhibition at Lunds Konsthall. Many artists
take a pleasure in provoking the established art world. Ture Sjolander also provokes
the rest of the world.

TOWNSVILLE
BULLTIN WEDNESDAY, JULY 17,
1991------------------------------------------TOPICS-----------------PAGE
5 Changes needed before we measure up to this Swede's
expectations.The man who would be Mayor by Mary
Vernon

Ture Sjolander is
eager to become a citizen of Australia - but he rejects anything to do with
Britain or the Queen."I
love Australia, my greatest concern is that Australians don't love it enough. As
soon it is possible to become a citizen of Australia without becoming a subject
of the Queen then I will seize the opportunity" he said.In the meantime
ex-artist Ture, 54, will keep his Swedish passport and keep hoping for the
social changes he sees as vital for Australia in general and for Townsville i
particular."I am tired of art, painting has no relevance in this modern age"
said Sjolander, whose work is exhibited in Sweden's National Gallery, Museum of Modern Art and other
international galleries."All of society has embraced technology, to improve
performance and to reach as many people as possible except for the artistic
world. It is blinkered and tied to the principle of one-off paintings and
limited edition prints."Perhaps it is still relevant in the Third World
countries which have no access to technology but in the Western World it
is finished. It is like making only one hand-written copy of a book".Ture
believes that the art establishment, the galleries and
curators are perpetuating an anachronism and he wants no part of it. His
plan is to change the world - well, Australia at any rate. He recently
sponsored a public competition to find a new name for the combined city of
Townsville/Thuringgova. The winner of the $500 prize was Don Talbot of
Cranbrook whose suggestion was "Queensland City"."There are many things I would
like to see in Australia," he said. "We must throw off the British colonial
system. The majority of
Australians are not of Anglo Saxon origin and they do not want to be part of
the British system. Having the British queen as the queen of Australia is
ridiculous."And the constitution of Australia - it is based on the Magna Charta
and it is not appropriate to Australia today. " We must
embrace multiculturalism and on that foundation build a strong, self-sufficient
country like America. "The minority cannot lead the majority. I believe that on
the declaration of the Republic of Australia most of those 700.000 who now hold
permanent resident visas, like me, would flock to become citizens."He first came
to Australia 1982 when he visited all the capital cities and the outback and
begane his love affaier witk this country.His biggest shock on that first trip
was meeting the great Australian mateship tradition and completely
misinterpreting it."I had only recently arrived in the country, I was in
Canberra and I was thirsty. I found a bar and went in, but when I saw it was
full of about 200 men drinking together and no woman I turned round and hurried
out. I thought it was the biggest homosexual club I had ever seen"He laughs now
over his mistake, but still believes we must let go our convict past, in which
he thinks the mateship tradition is rooted, to grow and expand in a truly
Australian way.After his first trip he come back again on his way to a film
project in Papua Guinea. He met his future wife, Maria, a Filipino-born Australian in
Sydney and, after tidying up his affairs in Sweden he arrived to settle and
marry her in Australia in 1988."We came to Magnetic Island for our
honeymoon and liked Townsville so much we stayed." Although they have now
separated, Ture continues to live in Townsville with his 20-month-old son, Matu
because he thinks it is an ideal place.When he first arrived, he found that
people were much friendlier if they thought he was a tourist. They would welcome
him and offer help. If he said he lived here, their concern and interest shut of
immediately."S I started to pretend that I was a tourist and people in shops and
buses and taxis were extremely friendly. When I saw the same person again
I would tell them I was back again on holiday."Ture has abandoned this game now
and hopes for a political future. His concerns are many and he is
passionate about them all. Ture Sjolander not one to remain uncommitted even
though some of his views may seem contradictory.On the one hand he is concerned
about over-developement of Townsville. He feels that it is a good size now and
double the population, as some developers have promised to do would destroy the
lifestyle many find attractive."We don't want another Brisbane or Sydney here.
Europe is full of cities which have followed this route and have been ruined by
over-development and over-industrialism."We don't want that to happen here".He
believes it would be preferable to spread developement around among the various
North Queensland centres, so that all can grow a little , but not too
much. But on the other hand he is keen to see developement on Palm Island." I believe that
Palm Island could be a great tourist tourist attraction. It is so naturally
beautiful, and so close to the reef. "We should negotiate with the community
there to build up tourism, to build a resort, maybe to stage an annual festival
there. " It is a great resource and on which is not being used". While he
waits for the republic and his chance at Australian citizenship, Ture spends his
time caring for his small son. "I have a single parent's allowance, which let me
stay home and look after Matu. Besides that, I have royalties from my books and artworks which are on
public display in Sweden. " Under Swedish law, artworks are treated the same way
as music and books here. If they are on show royalties are paid to the artists
for the privilege"

ARTIST Ture
Sjolander will spend $10.000 of taxpayers' money raising the ire of north
Queenslanders.Mr Sjolander, of Townsville, a Swedish expatriate, says he will
expose the harsh realities of the social issues affecting the area i a series of
two-minutes segments of "electronic art" to be aired weekly on television.he
will buy the air-time with a State Government arts grant."This is not a paint
brush, it is a power tool," Mr Sjolander said."I will criticise all the things
that people ignore or don't want to think about to make them aware through art.
"So much art doesn't touch people anymore, or has no relevance."Mr Sjolander, a
passionate and outspoken man, has been involved in art from painting to
videoproduction, since 1962.He has written several internationally published
books, including Garbo, a
pictorial biography of movie star Greta Garbo, and was commissioned by the
70s Swedish rock phenomenon Abba to create a tapestry.Mr Sjolander was
also commissioned by silent screen star Charlie Chaplin to produce an art
portfolio.In Townsville he is seen as a controversial figure.He recently held a
public competition to create a new name for the combination Townsville city and
Thuringgova shire under the Electorial and Administrative Review Committee's
amalgamation recomendations.The winner was Don Talbot, who received $500 for his
suggestion of "QUEENSLAND CITY".The competition provoked debate around the
town. With the help of his Creative Development
Grant, Mr Sjolander hopes to tackle a host of controversial issues;
Townsville General Hospital's Ward 10B - subject of the Carter inquiry into
the treatment of mentally ill patients, violence among Aborigines on Palm Island, X-rated videos,
tattoos, politics and religion."These are all the things that happen in this
area and they should be expressed in art to reflect the area," Mr Sjolander
said.He believes art in the modern world should be expressed using technology
and says that paintings are out-dated.He has even devised a plan to exhibit art
on the walls of Townsville Airport terminal "for all the world to see".The large
vacant walls in the terminal should be used to hanf paintings and tapestries,
and sculptures could adorn the flight deck, the first-class lounge and the
departure lounge, he said.His proposal suggest that the artworks be acquired on
a six-montly basis and artists may have them on for sale."Art can be anything at all,"
Mr Sjolander said."So there is no limit to what you can
do."

A PILOT
project to display art on the vacant wall spaces at the Townsville airport has
been proposed by local artist Ture Sjolander. Acting Townsville airport
manager Phil Roben said the suggestion was interesting and a meeting to discuss
the matter would be held next week. " I believe such a display could complement
the terminal very well," he said.Mr Sjolander believes that as the airport is
the first point of contact for businessmen, domestic and overseas tourists and
returning residents, there was no reason why the airport itself should not
become an attraction."I propose that the large vacant wall spaces be used for a
semi-permanent art display which could include a number of large paintings and
tapestries. " In addition to this, a small number of free standing sculptured
piece could be easily be accomodated."Mr Sjolander believed the flight deck, the
first class lounge and the departure lounge were other attractive areas where
graphic and smaller size artworks could be displayed."These could be
accomplished with minimal installation of lighting and hanging equipment," he
said."The pilot project for Townsville airport can be realised with very little
outlay, mutually benefiting the professional contemporary artists of North
Queensland and the Federal Airports Corporation". From this experiment
could evolve the creation of a unique airport environement which could become
the blueprint for others, Mr Sjolander said. He also envisaged the formation of
an art investment consultancy group under the airport corporation for future
interstate exhibition exchange. Support for the venture has been pledged by
Perc Tucker Gallery director Ross Searle and artist and James Cook
University art teacher Anne Lord, both of whom have expressed wish to join Mr
Sjolander on the selection committee for the first exhibition.

From:Men in Business - Advertiser, August 3, 1989 Sjolander a
pioneering artist

Mr Ture Sjolander's
artistic work represents more than one technique, from traditional tapestry work
to visualisation of electronic computing.He is a pioneer in video-art. His
work contributed to the development of the video-synthesizer.Mr Sjolander has
earned an international reputation for his multimedia art work since his debut
in 1960."Mr Sjolander has also served as a member of the board of the Swedish
Artists Society," former Minister for Cultural Affairs in Sweden, Mr Bengt
Goransson."He is represented at the Museum of Modern Art, Stcokholm, the Swedish
Government, the City of Stockholm and the Royal Fund for Swedish Culture have
awarded him grants for his work."He received the top grant for scientific art
research from the Royal Swedish Academy of Art.Mr Sjolander has produced
television programs for Swedish Television including The Role of Photography, Time, Monument, and Space in
the Brain.He is skilled in all kinds of printing techniques and is also a
professional photographer.Mr Sjolander has written several internationally
published books.For example he wrote a pictorial biography of Greta Garbo
titled: "GARBO", for one of the
largest publisher in America, Harper and Row (Harper&Collins) and the book
had world-wide distribution.He initiated work on a pictorial essay on Charlie
Chaplin. The dummy work was purchased by Charles Chaplin and the finished work
was titled "My Life in Picture",
1973.He was also commissioned by Chaplin to produce an art portfolio which was
signed by both Chaplin and Mr Sjolander.Mr Sjolanderwas commissioned by the
Swedish band ABBA, to produce graphic prints and a tapestry used in the
sponsorship of the 1977 America's Cup. He established an electronic picture
laboratory in Stockholm, VIDEO-NU, for artistic research and was the
administrator of the laboratory from 1980-1986.Mr Sjolander has created
monumental sized interior artwork for large industrial complexes in Sweden using
various techniques.He has had a large number of seminars and exhibitions
throughout Europe and he participated in the Fifth Biennale in Paris.He has
given lectures throughout world on art and technology, includinga lecture last
year at the Australian Film Institute in Sydney.One of the topics of his
lectures is possible establishment of multicultural communication by
satellite.This would include a three week international TV high tech and arts
festival, the commersialisation of peace via satellite and the formation of an
internatinal lobby group to connect all Television systems of the world.He is
presently involved with negotiations with Uplinger Enterprises (USA), the
organisation which organised Live Aid and Sport Aid, about establishing an
annual three week satellite link up.Campaign co-cordinator of One World or None,
Janet Hunt said the idea was marvelous. "The idea is a logical extension as we
move into the 21st century and we certainly support it." Jane Hunt said.Mr
Sjolander has conducted research into Townsville's history and the city council
have received a proposal to revise the history of the city.His research has
shown the first European to land in Townsville arrived 49 years earlier then
previously believed.The discovery may be celebrated with a special Townsville
Day and a 220 year celebration in 1990.He is also skilled in radio productions
and TV production.Mr Sjolander is interested in establishing an international
artist's centre in Townsville to display exhibitions from international
artists.He is a member of the Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery and believes i
Fusion Business. He is neither political nor religious but believes in authentic
humanity.

In the short history of
video animation the Swedish artists TURE SJOLANDER and BROR WIKSTROM are
the pioneers. Their television art programme ' TIME ' (1965 - 1966) seems to be
the first distortion of video-scan-line rasters achieved by applying tones from
wave form generators. For almost ten years they have been using electronic
image-making equipment for a non-traditional statement. It must be kept in mind,
however that SJOLANDER and WIKSTROM have a traditional and solid artistic
background. Howard Klein likens the relationship between the video artist
and his hardware to that between Ingres and the graphite pencil. It should be
added that real artists like SJOLANDER and WIKSTROM have a natural
relationship to any image-making equipment. In that respect they differ from
most cameramen and tape makers and they may come back some day as pioneers in
other fields of art.In fact they have already surpassed the limits of video and
TV using the electronic hardware to produce pictures which can be applied as
prints, wall paintings and tapestries. They have generously provided new
possibilities to other artists, they are not working alone on a monument of
their own.It is significant that the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts has
decided to support SJOLANDER and WIKSTROM financially.

Professor Dr. Bjorn
Hallstrom

Royal Swedish Academy of Fine
Art.

Stockholm -
1976

Fahlstrom about
Sjolander - 1961

We live at a time when borders
between the art forms are constantly being redrawn or abolished. Poets arrange
their poems as pictorial compositions or record spoken sequences of sound which
can hardly be distinguished from musique concrète. Composers are able to
build a complete composition around the manipulation of a spoken voice. Artists
sometimes create pictures by striking off newspaper photographs or mixing
conglomerates of discarded objects and painted areas into something which is
neither picture nor sculpture. Puppet theatre is performed by setting mobiles in
motion in the constantly changing light effects on a stage.The border between
photography and painting is no longer clear, either, and it is easy to
understand why this is so. Tinguély, the creator of mobiles, started out by
making a form of reliefs with moving parts, powered by a machine placed at the
back of them. After a while Tinguély began to wonder why he could not equally
well show the play of cog wheels and driving belts at the rear and let "machine"
and "shapes" become a united whole.Similarly, some photographers have asked
themselves why the action of light on photo paper and the development baths
could not become a creative process comparable with the exposure of a motif —
why camera work and darkroom work could not become one.Among those photographers
we find Ture Sjölander. Among those photo graphic artists, as he calls
them, who feel dissatisfied with the dialectic of the traditional photographer’s
relationship to his motif: when he searches for his motif, he is the sovereign
master of it, choosing and rejecting it —. At the very moment that he touches
the trigger, he has become enslaved to the motif, without any possibility (other
than in terms of light gradation) to do what a painter does — reshape, exclude,
and emphasize in the motif.This subjection to the motif does not have to be
disrupted by eliminating the motif. The photographer simply needs to remove the
limits to what is permitted and what is not allowed. To let the copy of a photo
remain in the water bath for an hour is allowed (if you want to keep the motif).
But leaving it there for a couple of days is the right thing as well (if you
want to let the motif diffuse into deformations soft and silky as fur).
Scratching with a needle or a razor blade is making accidents with scratches
into a virtue — and so on.In addition, there is the chance of manipulating a
figurative or non-figurative motif by copying different pictorial elements into
it, by enlargements which elevate previously imperceptible structures to the
visible level, even up to monumental dimensions. The tension between scratching
lines of light into a developed (black) negative the size of a matchbox and
enlarging it on the Agfa papers the size of a bed sheet. This is where the
photographer has at his command tricks of his art which the painter lacks, or at
any rate seldom uses.But on the other hand, is the photographer able freely to
experiment with the colour? Yes, he is — if he brushes paint on to the negative
and makes a colour copy.He may also, like Ture Sjölander, brush, pour,
draw etc. on a photo paper — possibly with a background copied on to it — with
water, developing or fixing sodium thiosulphite solutions, ferrocyanide of
potassium and other liquids. In that case the result is a single, once-only, art
work. In this way he is able to achieve a tempered and melting colour scale of
white, sepia, ochre, thunder cloud grey, verdigris, silver and possibly also
certain blue and red tones.In this area, however, it seems everything still
remains to be done — but one single photographer’s resources are not enough for
the experiments to be conducted widely and in depth. Sweden has recently
inaugurated its first studio of electronic music. When will photographers and
painters be given the opportunity to explore this no-man’s-land between their
time-honoured frontlines?

But can photography, in
principle, be equal to painting? Is not the glossy, non-handmade character of
the photo an obstacle? People have argued in a similar way about enamel work,
but that technique is now recognised as totally and completely of a kind with
the painted picture. If we adjust the focus of the "conventional painting
concept" when we are looking at photo painting, we will perchance discover that
in its singular immaterial quality it can possess new and suggestive
value.

Öyvind
Fahlström

Stockholm, 1961.

Translation from Swedish by
Birgitta Sharpe

TIME

"VIDEOART" ELECTRONIC
PAINTINGS - TELEVISED 1966 - 1967 - 1969.

"The role of Photography"
Commissioned by the National Swedish Television year 1964. B/w.
Multimedia/electronic experiment. 30 minutes. And an outdoor exhibition on
giant bill board in the City of Stockhom plus indoors exhibitions at Lunds
Konsthall and Gavle Museeum among other Gallerys. Represented as an
installation 80 dia/slides projected on canvas purchased by Pontus Hulten
at Moderna Museet Stockholm 1966. "TIME" - b/w, Commissioned by the
National Swedish Television. Electronic paintings televised in September 1966.
30 minutes. A video synthesizer was temporarily built, in spite of the
TV-technicians apprehension. (Same technical system was later used to create
MONUMENT one year later, 1967.) See lettersfrom RUTT
ELECTROPHYSICS, NY, USA dated March 12, 1974, below *. "In principle this
process is similar to methods used by Nam June Paik and others, some years
later." Rutt&Etra . Nam June Paik visited Elektronmusic Studion in
Stockholm July/August 1966 , during the Stockhom Festival; "Visions of
the Present". Static pictures from TIME was demonstrated for Paik at this
point in time. A rich documentation is available from the main news media in
Sweden about "TIME". Parts of "TIME" was planned to be send via satellite to
New York, but the American participants, E.A.T. - Billy Kluver and &,
pulled out. (See E.A.T.s and Billy Kluver's biased USA history page from Aug.
1966) "TIME" is the very first 'videoart'-work televised as an ultimate
exhibition/installation statement, televised at that point in 'time' for the
reason to produce an historical record as well as an evidence of 'original'
visual free art, made with the electronic medium - manipulation of the
electronic signal - and 'exhibited/installed' through the televison,
televised. Other important factors for the creation of TIME was our awareness
of the fact that the "electron" was, at this Time, the smallest known particle
and that all traditional visual art, up to this Time was created with light -
material/colour reflecting the light - (lightpainting) and the description of
our new concept should be "Electronic painting". Pontus Hulten and his
associates launched the term "Machine" art as an attempt to describe the Time
movement. Pierre Restany was using the term "Mec Art", later. The work was
commenced early 1966. (Soundtrack by Don Cherry, USA) Paintings on canvass and
paper was made from the static material, and in silk-screen prints, for a
large numbers of Fine Arts Galleries and Museums 1966, ironically in a
'limited edition', signed and numbered by the artist; Ture Sjolander/Bror
Wikstrom. (See National Museeum Stockholm, Sweden). "MONUMENT" - b/w.
Electronic paintings televised in 5 European Nations; France, Italy,
Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, 1968. Monument reached an total
audience of more than 150miljon. The work surpassed the limits of
"videoart" - a word first used in the beginning of 1970 - 73 - and was
developed into an extended communication project, involving other visual
artists, by invitations, multimedia artwork including the creation of
tapestries, (Kerstin Olsson) silk/screen prints on canvass and paper - first
edition, by Ture Sjolander/Lars Weck, posters, and an LP/Record Music,
(Hansson&Karlsson) and some years later paintings on canvass, (Sven-Inge),
and a book among other things, exhibited in several international Fine Arts
Galleries. Catalogue text for Ture Sjolander by Pierre Restany, Paris Oct.31,
1968.

Gene Youngbloods book "Expanded Cinema". 1970.

"SPACE IN THE BRAIN" - 30
minutes. Televised 1969, in direct connection with the moonlanding project by
NASA. in Swedish Television. Soundtrack by Hansson&Karlsson. First colour
electronic original painting where the electronic signal where manipulated.
Described in media as an Electronic Space Opera. Based on authentic material
directly delivered from NASA. Space in the Brain was a creation dealing with
the ; "space out there" - the space in our brains and the electronic space,
(in television) Contemporary to Clarke's 2001, except that the Picture it self
was scrutinized and the subject, and focused, in Space in the Brain. The
Static material from the electronic paintings was worked out into other medias
and materials; tapestrys made in France among other objects was made in large
size, 3 x 2 meter, for Albany Corporation USA and for IBM, Sweden, as in
"TIME" and "MONUMENT", see above.

And a serie of international bestseller
posters was produced, and world wide distributed, by Scan-Décor Upsala,
Sweden.

To: International Section of
Swedish National Television, Stockholm, Sweden.

Extracts;

"I am writing a detailed magazine article
about the history of video animation. From literature avaiable I gather
that a videofilm program, "MONUMENT", broadcast in Stockholm in January,
1968, was the first distortion of video scan-line rasters achieved by applying
tones from wave form generators.This is of such great importance - historically
- that I would like to obtain more detailed documentation of the program and of
the electronic circuitry employed to manipulate the video images.I
understand from your New York office that there may have been a brochure or
booklet published about the program. I will be happy to pay any expense for
publications, photcopies or other documents about the program and its production
-particulary with regard to the method of modulating the deflection voltage
in the flying-spot telecine used.

"Video synthesis" is becoming a prominent
technique in TV production here in the United States, and I think it will be
interesting to give credit to your broadcasting system and personal for
achieving this historic innovation."

Sherman Price

( A number of authentic
documents/letters from this communications is avaliable)No "detailed article" or
even magazine was never reported or later presented after receiving the vital
information from the Swedish Broadcating Company, by Rutt
Electrophysics)

Letter from the Manager of

THE PINK
FLOYD.

Stockholm, Septembre
11th 1967.

Dear Messrs Sjolander &
Weck,

Having seen your
interesting Stockholm exhibition of portraits of the King of Sweden made with
advanced electronic techniques I have been struck by the connection between this
new type of image creating and the music-and-light art presented by The Pink
Floyd. I think that your work could and should be linked with the music of
The Pink Floyd in a television production, and I would like to suggest that we
start arranging the practical details for such a production immedialtely. With
all his experiences from filming in the USA and elsewhere I also feel that Mr.
Lars Swanberg is the ideal man tp help us made the film.Please get in touch as
soon as possible.Yours sincerely

Andrew King

Monument

following text was written by
the Swedish Art writer KRISTIAN ROMARE 1968.

MONUMENT

electronic painting 1968byTURE SJOLANDER/LARS
WECK

We create pictures. We form conceptions of
all the objects of our experience. When talking to each other our conversation
emerges in the form of descriptions. In that way we understand one
another.

Instantaneous communication in
all directions. Our world in television! The world in image and the image in the
world: at the same moment, in the consciousness and in the eyes of millions.The
true multi-images is not substance but process-interplay between
people."Photography freed us from old concepts", said the artist Matisse.
For the first time it showed us the object freed from emotion.Likewise
satellites showed us for the first time the image of the earth from the outside.
Art abandoned representation for the transformational and constructional process
of depiction, and Marcel Duchamp shifted our attention to the
image-observer relation.That, too, was perhaps like viewing a planet from the
outside. Meta-art: observing art from the outside. That awareness has been
driven further. The function of an artist is more and more becoming like that of
a creative revisor, investigator and transformer of communication and our
awareness of them.Multi-art was an attempt to widen the circulation of artist's
individual pictures. But a radical multi-art should not, of course, stop the
mass production of works of art: it should proceed towards an artistic
development of the mass-image.MONUMENT is such a step. What has compelled
TURE SJOLANDER and LARS WECK is not so much a technical curiosity as a
need to develop a widened, pictorially communicative awareness.They can advance
the effort further in other directions. But here they have manipulated the
electronic transformations of the telecine and the identifications triggered in
us by well-known faces, our monuments. They are focal points. Every translation
influences our perception. In our vision the optical image is rectified by
inversion. The electronic translation represented by the television image
contains numerous deformations, which the technicians with their instruments and
the viewers by adjusting their sets usually collaborate in rendering
unnoticeable.MONUMENT makes these visible, uses them as instruments, renders the
television image itself visible in a new way. And suddenly there is an
image-generator, which - fully exploited - would be able to fill galleries and
supply entire pattern factories with fantastic visual abstractions and
ornaments. Utterly beyond human imagination.SJOLANDER and WECK have made
silkscreen pictures from film frames. These stills are visual. But with
television, screen images move and effect us as mimics, gestures, convultions.
With remarkable pleasure we sense pulse and breathing in the electronic
movement. The images become irradiated reliefs and contours, ever changing as
they are traced by the electronic finger of the telecine. With their production,
MONUMENT, SJOLANDER and WECK have demonstrated what has also been main-tained by
Marshall McLuhan: that the medium of television is tactile and
sculptural. The Foundation for MONUMENT was the fact that television, as no
other medium, draws the viewers into an intimate co-creativity. A maximum of
identification - the Swedish King, The Beatles, Chaplin,
Picasso, Hitler etc, - and a maximum of deformation. A language that engages our
total instinct for abstraction and recognition.Vital and new graphic
communication. A television Art.Kristian Romare, Sweden
1968 http://sjolanders.homestead.com/

www.worldnews.homestead.com/

The Artist that invented
Computer Animation

Aapo Saask on the artist Ture
Sjolander

2004

On an island aptly named Magnetic
Island off the coast of Australia, a Swedish artist lives in exile. Just like so
many others in today's media-landscape, he was first praised and then brought to
dust. However, he has left a lasting imprint on the world. As early as the
1960's, he made the first electronic animation. Had he been an inventor, he
would have been celebrated as a genius today, but because he is a predecessor in
the world of art, things are different. In that world, the great ones often have
to die before they are recognized. We all know how Disney's famous cartoons were
made: thousands of drawings, filmed in sequence. Even today some films are made
this way. However, electronic animation has opened up a new world within the
film industry and it has also made computer games and countless graphic
solutions possible in business and science. Pixar, which used to be part of
Lucasfilm and then sold to Steve Jobs in the lat 1980's, made the first
completely computer animated film called "Andre and Wally B" in 1983. The first
feature length fully animated movie was Toy Story from 1995. It was made by
Pixar and distributed by Disney. Disney had already started to use computer
animation in Little Mermaid from 1989, and then on through Aladdin, Lion
King, Pocahontas, etc In those fantastic movies the pictures were however first
drawn on paper and then scanned into computers for painting and cleanup and
superimposition over painted backgrounds. Decades earlier, in 1965,
Ture Sjolander’s electronically manipulated images were broadcasted by the
Swedish Television (SVT). Among other things, Ture Sjolander was experimenting
with the question of how much the portrait of a person could be changed before
it was unrecognizable, something which has pioneered the amazing morph-technique
that is used today. Gene Youngblood, who, alongside with Marshall McLuchan, is
the most celebrated media-philosopher of today, devoted a whole chapter in his
book Expanded Cinema, 1970, (Pre face by Buckminster-Fuller) to the
experiments of the SVT. Expanded cinema means transgression of conventions as
well as mind-expanding transgressions and new definitions. Sjolander’s
broadcasts were not technically sophisticated, but they were ground-breaking.
The film mentioned by Youngblood is "Monument" (1968) by Ture Sjolander
and Lars Weck. The other earlier televised pioneering animation were "TIME"
(1965/66) by Ture Sjolander and Bror Wikstrom, and later "Space in the Brain"
(1969) by Ture Sjolander, Bror Wikstrom, Sven Hoglund and Lasse Svanberg.
Whereas most of the modern-day artists fade into oblivion, Ture Sjolander has
found his place in the art history by the making of those films. Ture, a lad
from the northern city of Sundsvall, had instant success with his opening
exhibition at the Sundsvalls Museum 1961. He moved to Stockholm in the beginning
of the 1960's. At an exhibition in 1964 at Karlsson Gallery his imagery upset
the public so much that the gallery immediately became the trendiest place for
young artists in Stockholm. In 1968, he created another scandal, when the film
"Monument" was televised in most European countries. For a couple of years, Ture
Sjolander was celebrated in France, Italy, Switzerland, Great Britain and the
USA. In Sweden there was a lot of jealousy. The Museum of Modern Art and the
National Gallery of Sweden, to name a few, bought his works, but the techniques
he worked with were expensive and after a few years, he found himself without
resources. Instead he started to work with celebrities such as Charlie Chaplin
and Greta Garbo. They taught him that exile – mental and physical - is the only
way to escape destruction for a creative genius. He moved to Australia. Ture
Sjolander's works include photos, films, books, articles, textiles, tv-programs,
video-installations, happenings, sculptures and paintings – all scattered around
the Globe. Tracing will be a challenging and exciting task for a future
detective/biographer and web-archaeologist's.But mostly, his work consists of a
life of questioning and creation. This is what sets him aside as one of the
great artists of the 20th century. Another forerunner in the art
world, the internationally celebrated Swedish composer Ralph Lundsten, says in
an interview in the magazine SEX, 5, 2004: "In those days (the 19th
century), a painting could create a revolution. Today people look idly at all
the thousands of exhibitions that there are.’ Hmm. Oh, really. How clever he
is’, and they yawn… If I were a visual artist, and if my ambition was to create
something new, I would devote myself to the possibilities of the computer."In
1974, Sherman Price of Rutt Electrophysics, wrote to the Swedish Television
Company (SVT): "Video Synthesis is becoming a prominent technique in TV
production here in the United States, and I think it will be interesting to give
credit to your broadcasting system and personnel for achieving this historic
invention." He was referring to Ture Sjolander's revolutionary work in the
1960's. No one at the SVT could at that time imagine the importance that this
innovation would have for television, and hereby lost a lead position in the
computer-development business. Amongst the younger generation of computer
animators, few know that they have a Swedish predecessor. Many engineers were
probably working away in their cellars in those days, trying to do the same
thing, but Sjolander was the first person to show his results on the air. If any
of you would like to have a look at the Godfather of animation, you can find a
glimpse of him by googling. He did not seek to patent his inventions and he has
made no money from it. However, he has made it to the history books as one of
the great precursors of art - and perhaps also of technology - of the
20th century. For the past decades, Ture Sjolander has mostly lived
in Australia, but he has also worked in other countries, such as Papua New
Guinea and China. After a couple of decades of silence, Sjolander's
groundbreaking work was shown at Fylkingen, the avant guard media and music hide
out in Stockholm in the spring of 2004. In the autumn of 2004, some of his
recent acrylic paintings on canvas were exhibited at the Gallery Svenshog
outside of Lund, Sweden. This was to commemorate the forty years that have gone
by since his last (scandalous) exhibition at Lunds Konsthall. Many artists take
a pleasure in provoking the established art world. Ture Sjolander also provokes
the rest of the world. Aapo Saask

2004-08-26

www.worldnews.homestead.com/

TOWNSVILLE
BULLTIN WEDNESDAY, JULY 17,
1991------------------------------------------TOPICS-----------------PAGE
5 Changes needed before we measure up to this Swede's
expectations.The man who would be Mayor by Mary
Vernon

Ture Sjolander is eager to
become a citizen of Australia - but he rejects anything to do with Britain or
the Queen."I love Australia, my greatest concern is that Australians don't love
it enough. As soon it is possible to become a citizen of Australia without
becoming a subject of the Queen then I will seize the opportunity" he said.In
the meantime ex-artist Ture, 54, will keep his Swedish passport and keep hoping
for the social changes he sees as vital for Australia in general and for
Townsville i particular."I am tired of art, painting has no relevance in this
modern age" said Sjolander, whose work is exhibited in Sweden's National
Gallery, Museum of Modern Art and other international galleries."All of society
has embraced technology, to improve performance and to reach as many people as
possible except for the artistic world. It is blinkered and tied to the
principle of one-off paintings and limited edition prints."Perhaps it is still
relevant in the Third World countries which have no access to technology but in
the Western World it is finished. It is like making only one hand-written
copy of a book".Ture believes that the art establishment, the galleries and
curators are perpetuating an anachronism and he wants no part of it. His plan is
to change the world - well, Australia at any rate. He recently sponsored a
public competition to find a new name for the combined city of
Townsville/Thuringgova. The winner of the $500 prize was Don Talbot of
Cranbrook whose suggestion was "Queensland City"."There are many things I would
like to see in Australia," he said. "We must throw off the British colonial
system. The majority of Australians are not of Anglo Saxon origin and they do
not want to be part of the British system. Having the British queen as the queen
of Australia is ridiculous."And the constitution of Australia - it is based on
the Magna Charta and it is not appropriate to Australia today. " We must embrace
multiculturalism and on that foundation build a strong, self-sufficient country
like America. "The minority cannot lead the majority. I believe that on the
declaration of the Republic of Australia most of those 700.000 who now hold
permanent resident visas, like me, would flock to become citizens."He first came
to Australia 1982 when he visited all the capital cities and the outback and
begane his love affaier witk this country.His biggest shock on that first trip
was meeting the great Australian mateship tradition and completely
misinterpreting it."I had only recently arrived in the country, I was in
Canberra and I was thirsty. I found a bar and went in, but when I saw it was
full of about 200 men drinking together and no woman I turned round and hurried
out. I thought it was the biggest homosexual club I had ever seen"He laughs now
over his mistake, but still believes we must let go our convict past, in which
he thinks the mateship tradition is rooted, to grow and expand in a truly
Australian way.After his first trip he come back again on his way to a film
project in Papua Guinea. He met his future wife, Maria, a Filipino-born
Australian in Sydney and, after tidying up his affairs in Sweden he arrived to
settle and marry her in Australia in 1988."We came to Magnetic Island for
our honeymoon and liked Townsville so much we stayed." Although they have now
separated, Ture continues to live in Townsville with his 20-month-old son, Matu
because he thinks it is an ideal place.When he first arrived, he found that
people were much friendlier if they thought he was a tourist. They would welcome
him and offer help. If he said he lived here, their concern and interest shut of
immediately."S I started to pretend that I was a tourist and people in shops and
buses and taxis were extremely friendly. When I saw the same person again
I would tell them I was back again on holiday."Ture has abandoned this game now
and hopes for a political future. His concerns are many and he is
passionate about them all. Ture Sjolander not one to remain uncommitted even
though some of his views may seem contradictory.On the one hand he is concerned
about over-developement of Townsville. He feels that it is a good size now and
double the population, as some developers have promised to do would destroy the
lifestyle many find attractive."We don't want another Brisbane or Sydney here.
Europe is full of cities which have followed this route and have been ruined by
over-development and over-industrialism."We don't want that to happen here".He
believes it would be preferable to spread developement around among the various
North Queensland centres, so that all can grow a little , but not too
much. But on the other hand he is keen to see developement on Palm Island."
I believe that Palm Island could be a great tourist tourist attraction. It is so
naturally beautiful, and so close to the reef. "We should negotiate with the
community there to build up tourism, to build a resort, maybe to stage an annual
festival there. " It is a great resource and on which is not being
used". While he waits for the republic and his chance at Australian
citizenship, Ture spends his time caring for his small son. "I have a single
parent's allowance, which let me stay home and look after Matu. Besides that, I
have royalties from my books and artworks which are on public display in Sweden.
" Under Swedish law, artworks are treated the same way as music and books here.
If they are on show royalties are paid to the artists for the
privilege"

ARTIST Ture Sjolander will
spend $10.000 of taxpayers' money raising the ire of north Queenslanders.Mr
Sjolander, of Townsville, a Swedish expatriate, says he will expose the harsh
realities of the social issues affecting the area i a series of two-minutes
segments of "electronic art" to be aired weekly on television.he will buy the
air-time with a State Government arts grant."This is not a paint brush, it is a
power tool," Mr Sjolander said."I will criticise all the things that people
ignore or don't want to think about to make them aware through art. "So much art
doesn't touch people anymore, or has no relevance."Mr Sjolander, a passionate
and outspoken man, has been involved in art from painting to videoproduction,
since 1962.He has written several internationally published books, including
Garbo, a pictorial biography of movie star Greta Garbo, and was
commissioned by the 70s Swedish rock phenomenon Abba to create a
tapestry.Mr Sjolander was also commissioned by silent screen star Charlie
Chaplin to produce an art portfolio.In Townsville he is seen as a controversial
figure.He recently held a public competition to create a new name for the
combination Townsville city and Thuringgova shire under the Electorial and
Administrative Review Committee's amalgamation recomendations.The winner was Don
Talbot, who received $500 for his suggestion of "QUEENSLAND CITY".The
competition provoked debate around the town. With the help of his Creative
Development Grant, Mr Sjolander hopes to tackle a host of controversial issues;
Townsville General Hospital's Ward 10B - subject of the Carter inquiry into
the treatment of mentally ill patients, violence among Aborigines on Palm
Island, X-rated videos, tattoos, politics and religion."These are all the things
that happen in this area and they should be expressed in art to reflect the
area," Mr Sjolander said.He believes art in the modern world should be expressed
using technology and says that paintings are out-dated.He has even devised a
plan to exhibit art on the walls of Townsville Airport terminal "for all the
world to see".The large vacant walls in the terminal should be used to hanf
paintings and tapestries, and sculptures could adorn the flight deck, the
first-class lounge and the departure lounge, he said.His proposal suggest that
the artworks be acquired on a six-montly basis and artists may have them on for
sale."Art can be anything at all," Mr Sjolander said."So there is no limit to
what you can do."

A PILOT project to
display art on the vacant wall spaces at the Townsville airport has been
proposed by local artist Ture Sjolander. Acting Townsville airport manager
Phil Roben said the suggestion was interesting and a meeting to discuss the
matter would be held next week. " I believe such a display could complement the
terminal very well," he said.Mr Sjolander believes that as the airport is the
first point of contact for businessmen, domestic and overseas tourists and
returning residents, there was no reason why the airport itself should not
become an attraction."I propose that the large vacant wall spaces be used for a
semi-permanent art display which could include a number of large paintings and
tapestries. " In addition to this, a small number of free standing sculptured
piece could be easily be accomodated."Mr Sjolander believed the flight deck, the
first class lounge and the departure lounge were other attractive areas where
graphic and smaller size artworks could be displayed."These could be
accomplished with minimal installation of lighting and hanging equipment," he
said."The pilot project for Townsville airport can be realised with very little
outlay, mutually benefiting the professional contemporary artists of North
Queensland and the Federal Airports Corporation". From this experiment
could evolve the creation of a unique airport environement which could become
the blueprint for others, Mr Sjolander said. He also envisaged the formation of
an art investment consultancy group under the airport corporation for future
interstate exhibition exchange. Support for the venture has been pledged by
Perc Tucker Gallery director Ross Searle and artist and James Cook
University art teacher Anne Lord, both of whom have expressed wish to join Mr
Sjolander on the selection committee for the first exhibition.

From:Men in
Business - Advertiser, August 3, 1989 Sjolander a pioneering
artist

Mr Ture Sjolander's artistic
work represents more than one technique, from traditional tapestry work to
visualisation of electronic computing.He is a pioneer in video-art. His work
contributed to the development of the video-synthesizer.Mr Sjolander has earned
an international reputation for his multimedia art work since his debut in
1960."Mr Sjolander has also served as a member of the board of the Swedish
Artists Society," former Minister for Cultural Affairs in Sweden, Mr Bengt
Goransson."He is represented at the Museum of Modern Art, Stcokholm, the Swedish
Government, the City of Stockholm and the Royal Fund for Swedish Culture have
awarded him grants for his work."He received the top grant for scientific art
research from the Royal Swedish Academy of Art.Mr Sjolander has produced
television programs for Swedish Television including The Role of Photography,
Time, Monument, and Space in the Brain.He is skilled in all kinds of printing
techniques and is also a professional photographer.Mr Sjolander has written
several internationally published books.For example he wrote a pictorial
biography of Greta Garbo titled: "GARBO", for one of the largest publisher in
America, Harper and Row (Harper&Collins) and the book had world-wide
distribution.He initiated work on a pictorial essay on Charlie Chaplin. The
dummy work was purchased by Charles Chaplin and the finished work was titled "My
Life in Picture", 1973.He was also commissioned by Chaplin to produce an art
portfolio which was signed by both Chaplin and Mr Sjolander.Mr Sjolanderwas
commissioned by the Swedish band ABBA, to produce graphic prints and a tapestry
used in the sponsorship of the 1977 America's Cup. He established an
electronic picture laboratory in Stockholm, VIDEO-NU, for artistic research and
was the administrator of the laboratory from 1980-1986.Mr Sjolander has created
monumental sized interior artwork for large industrial complexes in Sweden using
various techniques.He has had a large number of seminars and exhibitions
throughout Europe and he participated in the Fifth Biennale in Paris.He has
given lectures throughout world on art and technology, includinga lecture last
year at the Australian Film Institute in Sydney.One of the topics of his
lectures is possible establishment of multicultural communication by
satellite.This would include a three week international TV high tech and arts
festival, the commersialisation of peace via satellite and the formation of an
internatinal lobby group to connect all Television systems of the world.He is
presently involved with negotiations with Uplinger Enterprises (USA), the
organisation which organised Live Aid and Sport Aid, about establishing an
annual three week satellite link up.Campaign co-cordinator of One World or None,
Janet Hunt said the idea was marvelous. "The idea is a logical extension as we
move into the 21st century and we certainly support it." Jane Hunt said.Mr
Sjolander has conducted research into Townsville's history and the city council
have received a proposal to revise the history of the city.His research has
shown the first European to land in Townsville arrived 49 years earlier then
previously believed.The discovery may be celebrated with a special Townsville
Day and a 220 year celebration in 1990.He is also skilled in radio productions
and TV production.Mr Sjolander is interested in establishing an international
artist's centre in Townsville to display exhibitions from international
artists.He is a member of the Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery and believes i
Fusion Business. He is neither political nor religious but believes in authentic
humanity.